2 Billion Years in Five Days
Where astrophysics meets supercomputers.
May 2022
Anthony Arnold
University of Queensland
School of Maths and Physics
Fun Fact
Nyeeruna chases the Yugarilya sisters across the sky and is challenged by Kambugudha.
Hamacher, D. W., 2017, Observations of red-giant variable stars by Aboriginal Australians, The Australian Journal of Anthropology.
Gravity is a Force
The first N-Body simulations (Holmberg 1941) used light bulbs on a table.
Now we use computers.
OzSTAR courtesy of Swinburne University.
How long would this all take for a realistic cluster of stars?
- \(10^6\) stars \(= 10^{12}\) calculations per step.
- \(10^{15}\) steps \(= 10^{27}\) calculations in total.
- \(3 \times 10^9\) calculations/s = 10 Gyrs.
I don't have that much time!
One solution is to use better hardware. It's still not fast enough.
My Code
Globular Clusters
- Dense clusters containing hundreds of thousands (or more) of stars.
- Gravity is the dominant force.
- Home to exotic objects, like binary black holes.
The final simulated state (present day) is not the same as observations. What are we missing?
There is still more work to do.
There is still more work to do.
Fun Fact
Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales 1821 - 1825, was an astronomer.
